


A New Start

by dirtylittlegreasemonkey



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-05
Updated: 2015-05-05
Packaged: 2018-03-29 05:20:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3883894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirtylittlegreasemonkey/pseuds/dirtylittlegreasemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Robert spends a grand on a car rental, but he has an even bigger surprise planned for Aaron - even if things don't quite go to plan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A New Start

 

He hears a purr first, not the crunch of tyres on gravel but a heavy base of engine and power and money. It’s not the usual choking stutter of cars that crawl into the yard, cars that with one kick will crumble into rust and metal, and Aaron can tell just by the rumbling sound of its arrival that this won’t be their usual sort of job. He’s got his head down in the paperwork, fixing Adam’s mistakes on last month’s accounts so he flicks up his gaze and indicates for Adam to see to whoever it is outside.

“Wo-oww! Nice wheels mate!” he hears Adam call as his boots chink on the steps of the portacabin, his exclamation sounding halfway between a whistle and a cheer. The door of the cabin stays open just long enough for Aaron to hear the other side of the conversation.

“Your better half around, or what?”

Aaron can’t help himself – he still gets that prickle spidering from the back of his neck out towards his spine every time he hears Robert’s voice. Is doesn’t matter when or where it is – a booth at The Woolpack, in bed at night when his toes are torturing him with cold, at breakfast in their ( _their_ ) kitchen when Robert’s quiet and fragile before his coffee.

“Aaron! Get your arse out here!”

He doesn’t need asking twice and the importance of the accounts drain away as he legs it over to the doorway. Robert, dressed in the slightly too snug shirt Aaron bought him for his thirty-second and a burgundy jacket salvaged from a minimal heap that Chrissie didn’t burn, leans against the doorway of a Lamborghini Huracan. It’s obnoxious – huge, blue and so shiny Aaron can almost feel his eyes frying in the sun’s reflection – but if anyone had asked him “Dream car?” it would’ve have been this – no question. It was the kind of car that would have been on his bedroom walls as a teenager, alongside the footie players and the underwear models (those up there out of show rather than lust). The kind of car he’d be cashing in a lottery win to get his hands on and taking for a spin on Brands Hatch and feel that adrenaline burning holes in his nerve endings. Now it’s the car his boyfriend is propped smugly against, one hand on the driver’s door and the other stuffed into the pocket of his jeans.

“Sweet,” he says, shaking his head in disbelief and not wanting to bow too much to Robert’s grand show. Since his divorce, the loss of wealth and status is something Robert has struggled to get used to – a bigger obstacle to their happiness than they both anticipated and the source of heated rows – and breaking his materialistic habits is an ongoing challenge. He’s had to get used to cheaper clothes and crappier toiletries, Aaron’s old car, and 2-for£10 bottles of wine. Aaron knows it’s been difficult – the fall from a great height – but there are times when he doesn’t understand why Robert just can’t get over it, why their relationship isn’t enough for him. _It is enough_ , Robert says – repeatedly – but Aaron knows just how much he misses the finer things in life.

Robert strokes the bonnet. Aaron knows he’s started doing well for himself now – earning money of his own right and enough that they were able to rent a cottage from Eric – but not enough that he can start driving around a Lamborghini.

“It’s ours for the day. You getting in then?” Robert asks.

“Working.”

“Jeez Rob, how much did that set you back, man?” Adam asks, showing more of the desired awe than Aaron.

“The best part of a grand for the day,” Robert says, unblinking, a veneer of his old pride coating his smile.

“Why?”

“I wanted to spoil you,” Robert says, unfazed by the clipped, bristling responses coming from Aaron.

There’s a sort of sickness that lines his stomach. Is this the equivalent to the girlfriend who gets the bunch of flowers when their boyfriend’s been playing away? What did Chrissie get – he wonders – when Robert returned to her after spending the night fucking him? He knows that Robert loves him, but it’s hard to forget his history when he’s always reminded of it. Once a cheat, always a cheat – that’s what his mum reckons anyway. That, and some other choice words to describe him.

“Well, I’m working,” he says, knowing he’s being an arse about it. He wants to turn straight around, back up the stairs and rationalise his mother’s stupid doubts. _Robert working away again, is he?_ she’d hum, almost proud of the seedlings she planted. But he hadn’t let the doubts grow because he didn’t believe them – Robert was working hard to pick himself up and he hadn’t been distant or overly attentive. Things were great. More than great.

Robert’s face falls but Adam’s quick to step in.

“Listen, mate, I could always slack off – show you how it’s done behind the wheel!”

“Er thanks, but that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind,” Robert says, the flirtatious layer to his voice so thickly ladled that even Adam could pick up on it.

He laughed awkwardly. “Right…I get you. _That_ sort of drive.” He climbs the steps and slaps Aaron on the back. “Right – see you later. And spare me the details, yeah?”

When Adam’s gone, Robert leaves his position and approaches Aaron, his chest rising with a deep sigh. “What have I done?” he says, standing far enough back so that on the steps Aaron is the same height as him.

“What’s all this about? You spent a grand on car for the day. Why?”

“I was trying to do something nice!”

“Yeah, but why?”

He breathes out a throaty laugh. “I can’t do something nice now?”

“Without an ulterior motive? Not usually, no.”

“Aaron, come on.” Robert climbs the bottom step and puts his hands on Aaron’s waist. “I thought it’d be fun. Like the old days.”

“So we don’t have fun anymore?”

“Will you stop twisting everything I say?” he says, snapping. The muscle in his cheek rages, flickers and then he’s calm again, voice low and soft like an engine. “You used to like going for a drive with me, I seem to remember.”

Aaron doesn’t say what he’d like to – he doesn’t make some short remark about sneaking around, about Chrissie, about rushed handjobs on country lanes before Robert had to crawl back home to his wife. He pushes that aside and sees the softness in Robert’s face up close – the iridescent green tinge his eyes have in the light, the wide mouth boyish smile – and lets himself relax and agree, feeling Robert’s childlike enthusiasm rub off on him.

*

They don’t get very far out of the village when they spot Paddy leaving the vets for his lunch break. Robert slows the car and lowers the window when Paddy makes it obvious he wants to chat.

“Look at this!” he says, gesturing to the car in a weird interest that he doesn’t normally have in cars.

“Something you’re after, Paddy?” Robert says, an impatience to his voice that he usually saves for Chas.

“No, no…just thought I’d say hello…see how things were…” He lowers his head into the car and gives Aaron a gummy smile.

“You feeling alright?” Aaron asks, frowning.

“Me? Top of the world. Living on a prayer! Just…just…you two have a nice drive, okay? Have a _really_ good time.”

Aaron shakes his head, laughing it off until they drive away and he sees Robert’s jaw clench and he wonders whether he’s already ruined Robert’s grand gesture by being an arse about it. Once they’re out of the village and on the road, he touches Robert on the shoulder and apologises.

“What are you saying sorry for?” Robert asks, all the gripped tension in his expression melting away. He has the sort of smile that makes Aaron forget his own name.

“For earlier. For being an idiot.” Aaron runs his eyes around the car, in all its ostentatious glory. “Even though I’m not the idiot who spent a grand renting a car.”

“Oh come on,” he says, indulging in a sideways glance at Aaron and sliding his hand across his knee. “It was the flash car that did it for you in the first place. Amongst other things…”

“Yeah, well. It certainly weren’t your ego, mate.”

*

“It’s a fucking joke!” Robert cries, slamming his hands down on the steering wheel.

They’re not having much luck – what with being stuck behind a tractor after following diversions, an A-road being closed off and another at a standstill because of an accident. Now having almost reached Robert’s desired and secret location they’ve joined a mile long queue on the motorway with no sight of the turn off.

“We’ll have to turn around and take this back to the garage at this rate!” Robert says, hunched in his own anger.

“Alright, calm down,” Aaron says, leaning on the window sill. “It’s no big deal. We’ve had a good few hours.”

“Oh yeah great, doing fifteen behind a fucking tractor and crawling along behind an Eddie Stobart – exactly what I had in mind!”

Robert blasts the horn at the helpless guy in front who’s just as static as they are in the crush of rush-hour traffic heading out of the city on their way home.

“It’s six o’clock – what did you expect?”

His fingers drum on the dashboard, the bottom half of his face stiffening. “No, I don’t expect you to understand. I mean, you can’t even work out why I might want to surprise you or do something nice for you.”

“Oh, I’m sorry – this is my surprise is it? Stuck in a hot car with you sulking and getting road rage cos you took a shit route. But no, it’s not Robert’s fault! It’s never Robert’s fault.”

Robert makes no attempt to speak to him, let alone look at him. He leans forward, blocking Aaron out of his sights and hanging right over the steering wheel. Aaron takes his own glares off out of the window, focusing on the other people stuck in traffic – looking for couples that go through as many extremes as they do. Do they exist? Is this what love is? Tearing strips off each other and then tearing at each other’s clothes? That’s always the way it had been with them – from day one. Now they had a cottage and were out in public as a couple it still didn’t seem to change things. They still argued at least once a week, they still had sex that felt too good to be real.

Eventually the queues dissipate and Robert continues on his planned journey, although they’re still in silence – neither of them talking or looking at each other, angry comebacks stored in their heads and held on their tongues. It’s another twenty minutes before the car stops. The sunset splinters through trees in the distance, although it’s not the pink sky you see on postcards – more of a muddy paint-pot blue, with flattened clouds with rough amber edges. They’re parked up high. Under the sky, patchwork fields spread out and layers of hills pile up in the distance. There are houses out their somewhere, villages like theirs, couples not talking, arguments still brewing.

“This is it then?” Aaron says, the endless silence only servicing to stew his mood into something grouchier, rougher. He doesn’t mean for his words to come out as scoffing as they do but Robert doesn’t help matters, arms folded over his chest and eyes sharp and squinted. “This is the big surprise.”

Robert snaps and leans forward, over Aaron’s side of the car and yanks open the glove compartment before slumping back in his seat, moody position unchanged. “In there,” he says, stiffly.

Aaron wants to tell him to forget it, he wants to unclip his seat belt and hitch a lift if he have to, if it means not spending another second sitting in a silence they’re too stubborn to break. But instead his eyes start to focus on the glove box, which isn’t like his car’s at all. His is stuffed with old McDonald’s boxes and Snickers wrappers, old headphones and manuals, but this car’s glove box is almost empty. Almost, because tucked neatly to one side is a small black box.

He feels like scoffing, like laughing. Some joke. But he dries up, tongue like a stone in his mouth and he takes the box from the compartment, holding it in his hand like it’s fragile, made of glass. The box is stiff when he opens it and the lid clicks when he’s pulled it apart – just a silver band staring at him and his stretched, gawping expression staring back.

“A ring. You bought me a ring,” Aaron says, knowing what it means but not brave enough, not secure enough to say out loud and admit that someone might ask.

“Might not fit.”

A gulp sticks in his throat. “It does.” It’s tight, but it fits. It feels heavy and light all at once. “Ask me then,” he says finally, closing the box and resting it on the dashboard. He wipes his eyes quickly and watches Robert unfold his arms.

Robert still stares out across the scene, in another world. Another place. “I came here when my dad died,” he says. “After I was a no show at the funeral. He brought me here once. I can’t remember why. Teach me a lesson about something. Didn’t work, never does. But I came here when he died and I looked out across here and I promised myself that I’d change. I’d become a better man for his sake and for mine. It was going to be a new start. A real future.” Robert’s head lowers, his mouth quivering. “It wasn’t, obviously. But I wanted to try again. Today. With you.” He exhales, shakily, hands spreading out over his knees. “And Paddy seemed to think it was okay. Didn’t dare ask Chas, you know what she’d say.”

"You asked Paddy?"

"Yeah."

"Explains the weird behaviour earlier."

"Yeah I think so."

Aaron folds his right hand over his left, pressing the ring into his skin.

“So, will you?” Robert asks, finally looking at him. “Make a new start with me. Marry me?”

“Yeah. Yeah. Alright.”   


End file.
